From Bethesda Magazine: A phone in the Silver Spring woods offers a cathartic conduit Installations by a Rockville nonprofit encourage people to process their grief

Giving old phones new lives as cathartic conduits

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July 31, 2026 9:55 a.m.

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Way back in the woods off New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring, under a mature maple, is a little black phone in a wooden booth. Accessed by a mile-long loop trail, there’s no dial tone when you pick up the receiver. The only sounds continue to be those of the forest: chickadees, cardinals and the occasional breeze. The premise of this “wind phone” is as simple as it is healing: Speak into the phone and let the wind carry away your thoughts about grief.

Wind phones originated in Japan. The one at Reflection Park, a natural burial ground, was installed in March as the first of two in Montgomery County. The other, located near a path and pond on Booth Street in Gaithersburg’s Kentlands neighborhood, was installed in May. Both are the work of Rockville’s Olivia Chao Delfert, who founded The Little Wind Phone Project, a nonprofit, in June 2025 to process her feelings of anticipatory grief while supporting her parents through serious illnesses.

“There aren’t places in our community to process these kinds of emotions openly,” Chao Delfert, 42, says. She realized while caring for her parents “that it was healing just speaking feelings out loud instead of holding things in.”

Reflection Park, 16621 New Hampshire Ave, Silver Spring, reflectionpark.org, littlewindphoneproject.org

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This appears in the July/August 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine